WASHINGTON – President Bush acknowledged yesterday that his Iraq strategy had made only limited progress, but he put off considering a change of course in the war until a crucial September report.

Hours after Bush spoke, the Democratic-controlled House, by a narrow 223-201 vote, defied the president’s veto threat and approved legislation to bring combat troops out of Iraq by April 1, 2008.

The measure, which also tells the Pentagon to start yanking out troops in four months, faces an uncertain future in the Senate, where it is expected to be taken up next week.

An interim White House report released just before Bush spoke gave the Iraqi government mixed marks in meeting political and security goals.

Bush said that “war fatigue” had set in among the American public and Congress but that it was premature to talk about bringing U.S. forces home, less than a month after all of an additional 28,000 U.S. troops arrived as part of a new attempt to boost security.

“I believe we can succeed in Iraq and I know we must,” the president said.

In remarks aimed at his critics, he added, “When we start drawing down our forces in Iraq, it will [be] because our military commanders say the conditions on the ground are right, not because pollsters say it’ll be good politics.”

Bush urged lawmakers to withhold judgment until he receives a broader assessment in September. “I don’t think Congress ought to be running the war,” he said in his first full-scale news conference in two months. “I think they ought to be funding the troops.”

The president said there was satisfactory progress by the Iraqi government toward meeting eight of 18 so-called benchmarks, unsatisfactory progress on eight more and mixed results on the others.

In one grim finding, the report said as many as 80 suicide bombers per month cross into the country from Syria.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said the White House report confirmed that the Iraq war was “headed in a dangerous direction.”

At the news conference, Bush used a new intelligence report on the strengthening of al Qaeda as evidence the United States should stay the course.

“The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq were the ones who attacked us in America on Sept. 11,” he said.

The intelligence report is expected to say the terror group is stepping up efforts to sneak operatives into the United States and is still pursuing chemical and nuclear weapons.

It also expresses concern about individuals already in the country who are adopting an extremist brand of Islam.